Blacker Than They Smear It deancas fic exchange
by twelvedaysnorthofhopeless
Summary: Dean is the best dream forge there is, because for him, forging doesn't end when he wakes up. He's losing his identity, and fighting insanity on a slippery slope. He never realized that after all these years, finally being cornered was exactly what he needed. He only wishes the extractor that's about to kill him didn't look like a dirty tax accountant.


_Well, it had to happen sometime, _Dean thinks as he leans back against the wall, slowly lowering himself down to sit. The breath that starts as a resigned sigh comes out as an agonized gasp; he tightly grips his side where the bullet had grazed him. He is dreaming, of course, but that doesn't make the pain feel any less real, no matter what his mind tries to tell his body. The physical pain, he can cope with that. It's the mental coming-to-grips with the fact that his extraction team turned fire on him, had planned to betray him since the start; _that's _difficult. He needs to move, needs to find a good vantage point, needs to plan, but he can't find the strength. He's just so damn tired. He sits there, asleep and dreaming, and yet feels more tired than he can ever remember.

Dean closed his eyes, just for a moment, and misses him coming into the room. He hears the door click shut, opens his eyes, and suddenly there stands a man with hard blue eyes, an expressionless stare, and a gun to his head.

"How the mighty have fallen," he says, his voice deep and calloused. Dean doesn't recognize him-but he hadn't expected to.

"Didn't realize I was such a celebrity," he replies, smiling with bloodied teeth.

"You have quite the reputation," says the man. His blue eyes narrow and his mouth twitches in something that might be a frown. He tilts his head and observes Dean, almost appearing confused. "I expected..."

"Taller?" Dean half-chuckles.

"No, darker."

Dean pauses, looks at him crookedly. "You thought I'd be _black_?"

The man straightens, a scowl sitting distinctly on his face.

"That isn't what I meant."

There is a strange, almost companionable silence as the two stare each other down-the hunter stumbling across his prey just laying down in the grass, too tired to run any further. Their eyes both turn to the door as they hear the echos of feet pounding down the hall, accompanied by the sounds of doors opening and closing.

"You mind making this quick?" Dean shifts into a more comfortable position with a pained grunt and lazily motions for the man to continue. "I've got an appointment with...well whoever the hell you're working for."

"You don't even know why we're after you?"

Maybe he's ruined one of their lives, perhaps destroyed one of their father's businesses. Maybe _his_ father had sent someone's daughter down into limbo, and they were decidedly going after John Winchester's son-an eye for an eye. Maybe he's forged into one of them before, committed some act of treason wearing their face, and they sought retribution. Or maybe he's just been enough of a dick to simultaneously piss all of them off. There are literally millions of equally likely possibilities crowding his mind, and he has no idea which one he's about to get killed over.

_No, I don't_. It's an exhausting thought.

"I piss off a lot of people in my line of work," he decides to say. "Forgive me if I lose track."

"Of them?" the man asks, stepping forward, shadows darkening his face as he bends his head to look at Dean. "Or yourself."

The words are phrased like a question and spoken like a fact. And Dean, well, when it comes to personal matters, he isn't the greatest liar. So he leans his head back against the wall and just widens his bloody smile.

There are voices outside the door now and angry knocks. They resonate painfully in Dean's ears, cutting through the white noise drowning his mind. A ticking clock.

"So," Dean asks, looking the extractor-the man who beat him-up and down. White shirt, buttoned all the way to the collar. Cheap khaki slacks. Poorly knotted blue tie. Tan overcoat hanging well past his knees. Less than he would've expected, but he supposes he deserves that. "Does the concealed carry tax accountant have a name?"

The man stares, silent, his expression unreadable. Raised voices. Fists pounding on the door. Tick tock.

The door slams open just as the man bends down to grab Dean's shoulder, wrenching him off his feet and steadying him with a firm grip when he finds that Dean is too weak to stand on his own. Dean stares, shock and dizziness making everything move in slow motion, everything floating into his vision in flashes of color and sound.

Three dark figures at the front of the room, guns raised. Safeties clicking off. A white ceiling. Something smashing. An ornate gold table. A picture of an angel on the wall. And then _blue_-the man's eyes fixing his gaze like an anchor as Dean's vision suddenly clears, and the world speeds up again.

"It's Castiel," he says, pressing up next to Dean and raising the pistol in his hand to his own temple. When he fires, the bullet rips through both of them.

Dean wakes with a gasp and sees him-Castiel-already standing. Dean sees the bodies of the other dreamers strewn about the floor, but his gaze quickly returns to the man in the middle of the room looking intently at his watch.

He wants to ask why. He wants to ask a thousand things. But the mind of a soldier is set to prioritize, so he only asks one: "How long do we have?"

Castiel holds his hand out and Dean reaches up-they grab onto each other's wrists and Dean is pulled to his feet as the man answers-"30 seconds.

"Run."

Out on the street, Dean reaches his car, its sleek black reflecting the midnight glow of the street lights. He climbs into the driver's seat just as shots ring out in the dark, feels another body slide in beside him, filling the passenger seat that's sat empty for almost four years.

"Sure pal, climb on in."

"Just drive."

The routine is basically the same. Driving through the night, taking back roads, constantly checking his mirrors, trying to measure out how far is far enough.

But now he has a passenger.

Granted, a mostly silent passenger. Every so often he'll tell Dean that he's speeding, that the last thing they need is to get pulled over, or ask him why he's driven in a circle, and Dean will politely remind shotgun to shut the fuck up.

They cross the border into New Hampshire around 5 AM, and with almost a whole state behind them, Dean finally starts to relax; he rolls his shoulders back, loosens his fingers on the steering wheel, and winces slightly from a phantom pain in his side. Instinctively, his hand goes to his totem-simple gold charm on a rope necklace, a present from Sam almost twenty years ago-and he feels its familiar, hollow weight. Even the best architects he's come across miss that small detail; they assume that it's solid all the way through, and the charm always feels just a fraction too heavy.

He's not dreaming.

He combs his fingers back through his hair and spares a glance at his companion out of the corner of his eye. Castiel stares resolutely ahead, but seeming to sense Dean's eyes on him, turns to look at him just as Dean turns back to the road.

"So, you gonna tell me why you saved my ass back there?"

Castiel looks away, his eyes straying out the passenger side window. He is silent for a moment and then says: "Curiosity."

Dean stares at him a second, waits for him to maybe _develop_ that answer a bit, then brakes with a squeal of tires. He stops in the middle of the empty road, beneath an old traffic light. Unused, it continues to pitifully blink yellow every few seconds, dim bursts of light that fill the interior of the car.

"That's not a fucking answer," he snaps, one hand already sliding down to the gun he keeps beside the driver's seat.

"It's the truth," he says, unphased by Dean's behavior and still not meeting his eyes.

"Then why don't you elaborate a bit," Dean growls, bringing the gun across his chest to point it at Castiel.

Castiel turns his head to look at him, his expression completely unruffled and his eyes intense; they spark in the periodic flashes of yellow, lighting up flames in his eyes that Dean finds devastatingly familiar.

"I was introduced to a man who offered me a considerable sum of money in exchange for your capture. He was polite. Civilized, charismatic...demanding, but likeable."

Then Castiel's eyes darken. He turns and stares up at the blinking traffic light, frowning around his next words:

"Every moment I spent shaking his hand, I spent waiting for a knife to appear in the other. I didn't trust him, and I knew whatever he had planned for you was ill-intentioned. I expected a man who would go through such lengths to have you captured was hunting a traitor, an enemy. I wasn't surprised to hear that my target was a _forge_, and I assumed the worst of you."

"Then why?" Dean says angrily, distrusting and confused. Castiel looks at him, leans into his space and forces Dean to bend back, his grip slipping on the gun.

"Because when I met you, I realized I was accepting money in exchange for sending a good man to his death, or worse. I was surprised, and under pressure, and I decided to make another call. That's the truth."

Dean could say a lot in response to that. He could ask who the man is, or who Castiel even is-if that was his real name at all.

He could ask Cas why he really saved him-because it isn't because Dean was a "good man," he isn't a good _anything_. He's a _forge_; he's barely even a man at all. He could ask Cas why he's lying to him. Why he hadn't chosen someone, anyone else.

But his mouth is suddenly dry and his throat closed-choked by all the things he wants to ask but can't say-and Castiel is leaning into his space and he's finding for the first time in years that he wants to lean back.

So instead, he says: "Dude, personal space," and Cas blinks at him a moment before sliding back, and Dean releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Tomorrow he can ask questions. Tomorrow he can find the time and energy to sort the idea of Castiel through his mind and decide if he can trust him. Tomorrow he can find out who this mysterious contractor is, and what he wants Dean for.

Tonight, he's tired, and reaches down to turn the keys and set the engine running again. He's pulling the car into drive when Castiel speaks up beside him:

"While we're answering questions, why don't you tell me this, Dean." Cas looks at him and Dean, determinedly, does not. "You've had more than enough opportunity to strand me, to kill me, or leave me behind. Why haven't you?"

Dean turns to him and has an answer, he does, but it's difficult to put (blue eyes soft features calming voice "a good man" filling a seat left so empty companion trust _home_) into a few words, or a single reason. It is a mess and jumble of things, and it's giving him a headache thinking about it. So he answers as best he can:

"Curiosity, I guess."

And as the car roars to life and speeds down the road, Dean swears out of the corner of his eye that he sees that carefully expressionless mouth quirk into a smile.


End file.
